Personality changes, and by that I mean character morphing. Now there’s an interesting topic. On websites like Quora, people searching for answers debate questions such as the periodicity and impact of personality changes on a person. Is it every seven years? Are they reversible? What brings them on? What if I don’t like the me I could become, etc.
As for me, personality changes generally follow a major upheaval, and I’ve had my share of upheavals, with potentially more to come because that’s life. Some were productive, some were “meh!” The productive ones were geographical and planned (relocating for work etc.); others were ambivalent and mercurial, not really based on any one particular instance; and others just plain sucked. Some happened in a matter-of-fact way and some left me wondering how I could ever right such a cosmic wrong… and then there’s the bear I intentionally poked and immediately regretted (separation, unemployment…) and yes, I’ll freely admit, I’ve poked some metaphorical bears in my time.
Comfortably Numb?
An esteemed colleague of mine passed away recently after a long period of fighting an illness we still haven’t found a cure for. The way my work peers reacted showed that we all have our own ways of coming to terms with the passing of a colleague. He was in his early sixties and the distress was perceptible. Elsewhere, a famous jazz and rock-n-roll drummer died recently as well. The sadness was apparent on social media, including on some of the scrappier SoMe sites, but overall, the sentiment was one of lauding and applauding an artist who had just taken his final bow. He was 80.
Emotional upheavals generate different reactions in different people, especially where a protracted illness is involved. Some people exteriorize, some don’t. Some people seek relief in religion, esoteric and, hopefully, mental health support, while others take different, more obscure routes. It’s a choice. There’s always a choice, but if you’ve never been there, it may be hard to understand why a person could think seeking consolation in a dark place was the answer.
Look, Listen, Heal and Help
The time it takes to heal depends on you. You can reflect on the injustice of it all, or you can go looking for ways to understand what happened and how to reap some positive from it. Thinking of the impact it may have on your personality may be the last thing on your mind at the time, but ultimately, it will occur to you, and when it does, you’ll be in a good place to start helping others experiencing similar trials and tribulations.
That said, you will learn that some people will push back and doubt your motives. This is where whatever you may know about emotional intelligence and empathy will prove useful. This is also where you will be able to gauge how far you yourself have come, mentally and spiritually, since whatever it was that upended your life… and your personality along with it.
To paraphrase a wise man, we have no power over events, only over our minds. Some may beg to differ, and that’s their right, but every day, at home or at work, through routine social interactions, we communicate with others in ways not always of our choosing. Should we systematically try to gain the ascendance, or simply roll with the course of a conversation to see where it leads? Tilt the playing field and bring the discussion to where we feel more comfortable. Remembering the words of another wise master: “Do. Or do not. There is no try. ” Your mental well-being, and that of those you seek to help, depends on your ability to navigate difficult conversations and, where necessary, exploit other people’s weak points and body language and expressions, whether visual or implicit, deliberate or unintentional.
Forgiveness is a process, not a decision.
A few years back, I took training in emotional intelligence. It taught me how to identify and decipher signals people often produce when communicating. By utilizing certain tools and techniques, you’re able to recognize signs, sometimes barely perceptible, that will give you that slight but still exploitable advantage. Wisely or with ruse, use it as you see fit. Emotional intelligence is, after all, just a tool. The objective is to be equipped for the next difficult situation, because after this one there will be another, and another one after that.
Going into this training, I remembered something one mentor taught me several years ago. He said: “It’s better to incident manage every day and know what to do than suddenly be faced with a seemingly anodyne incident and watch it degenerate.” It was me alone who was tasked with resolving these issues, and I realized that while I had been getting results, there had to be a better, easier way of doing it. My mentor was right, and eventually the sensation of preparedness and assurance grew with each successive incident.
“The Amontillado!”
Nemo me impune lacessit
Thanks to this mentor’s guidance and another coach’s advice, both canny professionals with their own agendas, the cost was mitigated, and I quickly learned how to bat away most of the challenges. It still came at a cost, but that’s why I later understood that there were other more cost-efficient ways of reaching the same results; tools such as emotional intelligence, that have, to use soccer terminology, helped keep control of the dressing room in awkward situations.
It was a turning point for me and one of the most useful and relatable lessons I’d learnt, one that helped change my attitude at work and become more of a listener, ever willing to learn and ready to step back and weigh consequences and options instead of reacting unprepared and risking a successful long-term partnership.
Other techniques I picked up along the way that made an impact on me were learning how to empathize and how to analyze micro-expressions, those facial and body language tics that betray an inner sentiment. Be wary, though; your conversation partner might have followed the same training as you and learnt the same techniques, and if they did, then that’s where all your prowess in chess will prove useful, but that’s another story.
Edited.
Charlie Watts RIP
Albatross133 
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